I’ve voted for President nine times. Once for a Democrat, once for a Republican, and seven times for third parties. Lived in a swing state, too.
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I think that fines should automatically be equal to twice the financial gain. Your fraud nets $11B, you pay $22B. The faulty ignition switch? Fine is twice the wholesale cost of every car sold with that switch. All money needs to come from dividends, bonuses, and executive compensation before dipping into capital, and only after that can you tap stuff that affects workers.
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I don’t want Warren as president, I want her as Attorney General. Of every possible position in government, I want her in the one which decides who to investigate, who will face charges, who will settle, and for how much. That is where she would do the most good. My second choices are as head of the SEC, or a Supreme Court justice.
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Wrong country but it still applies
My dream team would be Bernie and Warren, don’t care much who ended up president or vice president.
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I didn’t get that impression from reading the Big Short. They didn’t create the loose mortgage standards, or the fraudulent triple A ratings. AIG did not have to sell credit default swaps on crappy mortgages (or at least they should have priced them correctly)- when one of the AIG analysts had the gall to point it out to his AIG boss he got screamed at.
The short sellers saw that CDS were underpriced and if one only does the math and sees that when the teaser rates expire and the higher rates come in there will be a string of defaults. While everyone else believed house prices would only go up.
Also they weren’t expecting a systemic failure, for instance if Bear Stearns had been allowed to collapse, they would have been out of luck and their bets would have been worthless.
The banks continued to lower lending standards in response to the eagerness of these traders to purchase more of the instruments. Lower standards were done by the banks, yes, but it was to fill more tranches for these buyers. The fueled the fire. I’m not saying they are solely responsible, but it may have never gotten so big without them, it may have never blown up the way it did.
These kind of penalties make the “Justice” Department complicit in the crime, just taking their skim. I wonder how many “Justice” Department employees later get jobs with the criminal companies.
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